Jun 24 2010

Multiple Sites, One Interface?

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 10:24 pm

I have yet to play with the multi-site abilities of WordPress 3.0 (porting over WordPress MultiUser main characteristic). I want to see if I can have all of my blogs looked after by one super admin interface, so when the time came to upgrade to WordPress 3.1, or one of the plugins, I could go through the process just once instead of twenty odd times. I’m not sure how the process would work when some plugins are only installed on some sites. If have a plugin that pulls in news from various RSS feeds on one site, but that plugin isn’t used elsewhere, what happens? I also think I’ll need to still use an extra plugin and fiddle with some CNAME records, as all the sites except one are on totally different domains, not subdomains or folders of one master site. Anyway, that is all a project for another day – I don’t have the time to dedicate to repairing any potential problems I may cause right now.

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5 Responses to “Multiple Sites, One Interface?”

  1. AlexC says:
    July 7th, 2010 9:15 am

    So have you updated to WordPress 3.0 yet? Presuming you have, is it all ok and having used you as the guinea pig is it now safe for me to update from 2.9.2? As my blog fairy normally does it for me I thought it would be good for me to do it myself for a change. I’m guessing all I have to do is click on “Update now” ?

  2. ChrisM says:
    July 7th, 2010 2:43 pm

    See https://chrismerriman.com/installed-wordpress-3-0-on-mai/

    My old theme couldn’t handle WP3.0, so all the posts vanished from the front page. No data loss obviously, however only the header and sidebars were visible. That is why I changed themes, still not heard anything back from the old theme author re. a fix, and sort of used to this new theme now anyway. Just wish I could be bothered to figure out how to add an extra sidebar, as I don’t want to cut down on widgets, but on single post pages, the sidebar looks too long.

    • ChrisM says:
      July 7th, 2010 2:44 pm

      Ooops, meant to say that yes, all you need to do is click on update now.
      However, check the theme author’s site to see if anyone else has had problems with WordPress 3.0 first, and also make sure you’ve backed up your database first.

  3. Alex C says:
    July 8th, 2010 3:25 am

    Ahh, so that’s why you changed your theme. I thought it was a bit strange that you lost your side bars. It took me ages to get used to cos of the posts stretching all the way across the page. I don’t think I like the elastic widths. 960px is nice and comfortable on the eye.
    Good idea about checking out the author, though hopefully it will be fine as the dude seems pretty pro.

    As for backing up my database??? Does that involve SQL tables? No idea what to do with them but I start college again on 19th July and we’re doing MySQL and php so hopefully I’ll learn loads of useful stuff 🙂

    • ChrisM says:
      July 9th, 2010 6:22 pm

      I prefer flexible widths normally, and re. the author, if you’ve not updated your theme at all, then we’re hoping s/he was able to predict what would happen with WordPress 3.0 before it came out, and designed the theme accordingly. If you’ve not checked the theme’s site, do so first.
      Re. backup – I’d recommend WP-DBManager (just search for it with WP’s built in plugin finder), you can set it to automatically backup your tables and e-mail you the file. Hope you learn lots of useful things as well. You can teach me a few things then 🙂